New reports suggest Spotify is going public

Spotify has allegedly filed confidentially with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO.

The music streaming giant could forgo tradition and offer a direct listing—a first for a major company.

The IPO is rumored to take place in the first half of 2018.

Music streaming giant Spotify is expected to go public. The company filed for confidentially for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, sources told Axios and Reuters.

Spotify will reportedly forgo a traditional float, and will instead opt for a direct listing. Doing so would save it some of the fees usually associated with going public and avoid the need for a bank to underwrite the IPO. A direct listing would be an usual move, and Reuters states that Spotify would be the first major company to do so.

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Spotify is the largest music streaming service on earth. It was valued at over $19 billion last year and has the attention of both Wall Street and Silicon Valley with this move. As of right now, there is no set date for the company to go public. Sources indicated that it would either be in Q1 or H1 of 2018, but weren’t more specific.

One thing throwing doubt on the deal is the $1.6 billion lawsuit against the company by Wixen Music Publishing. It alleges that Spotify used thousands of songs that it didn’t have the rights to stream. Sources indicated that Spotify would still move forward on the IPO despite the suit, but no one knows what effect it may have on the offering.

This is a developing story, and we will update this post as new information becomes available.